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Eric Muehlbauer
Guest
Earlier today, while at school, I was doing some googling for a powerpoint lesson on parasites. While looking up Guinea worm, I was surprised to see that its genus name is Dracunculus. There is also an arum with that genus name. When I googled Dracunculus, I found plenty about the arum, and a decent amount about Guinea worm, but nothing about the synonomy, nothing about which genus has priority. Now it is my understanding that there can only be one name for a genus, regardless of whether it's plant, animal, eukaryote, prokaryote, living, fossil. In the case of 2 synonyms, the earliest named gets it. So....how is it that there can be a plant and an animal with the same genus name?